The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

on the World Today

LIKE many other presidents before him, President Kennedy has begun work with his second Congress with more limited and realistic objectives than he put forward two years ago. Instead of a long list of controversial measures, many of which he knew would not be accepted, the President has asked the 88th Congress for concentrated work on a comparatively small number of major proposals as a kind of bridge to a second term. He outlined his program in detail in his State of the Union message and in the other basic documents he sent to Congress in January.

Above all, he made it clear that he wants substantial tax reduction and reform this year. “This is the most urgent task confronting the Congress in 1963,” the President said. He argued that only with a sizable cut could the domestic economy be strengthened to provide the underpinning necessary to deal with the “stubborn and troublesome” balance-of-payments problem. In nearly all his speeches, the President emphasized the close alliance between domestic and foreign policies. “Nothing we could do to help the developing countries would help them half as much as a booming United States economy,” he said. “And nothing our opponents could do to encourage their own ambitions would encourage them half as much as a chronic, lagging United States economy.”

Months will be required to win House and Senate approval of President Kennedy’s farreaching tax proposals. But however long the battle will take, he is resolved to see it through. For on the success of the effort to strengthen the domestic economy this year rests his main hope of winning approval for his other proposals.

The honeymoon period with his first Congress, the 87th, was more difficult for President Kennedy than for most presidents because of the uncertainty of his mandate in the close election of 1960 and because of the narrow margin between Kennedy supporters in Congress and the conservative coalition. Now, although the numbers are not greatly changed between Democrats and Republicans, a new atmosphere is apparent as both parties attempt to assess the meaning of the President’s strength with the voters, to survey the changing political currents in the country, and to maneuver for the 1964 presidential election campaign.

New directions in Congress

The ease with which the President won his fight to enlarge the House Rules Committee this year, as contrasted with 1961. and the revolt of the young Republican House members against the orthodoxy of their House leaders underline the fact that there is political ferment and a search, however halting and uncertain, for new paths.

It should be noted that 28 Republicans and a majority of Southern Democrats voted this year with the Democratic leadership to enlarge the Rules Committee. And the Young Turk rebellion that ousted veteran Representative Charles B. Hoeven of Iowa from the chairmanship of the House Republican Conference and replaced him with Representative Gerald R. Ford, Jr., of Michigan won by a vote of 86 to 78. The revolt was a painful shock to House Republican Leader Charles A. Halleck and Republican Whip Leslie C. Arends. They recognized at once that the attack on Hoeven was a warning that the younger men will not oppose every Administration measure just for the sake of opposition.

The President’s strategy

From the beginning, despite the warnings of many in his party who said he could lead Congress only if he marshaled public opinion against the obstructionists, the President has resolutely followed the path of conciliation, cooperation, and persuasion. In his approach, he has been more orthodox than most of his Democratic predecessors. While he has attempted to assert presidential power, he does not usually do so at the expense of congressional feelings, which are sensitive in the extreme. He has refused to quarrel openly with the powerful committee chairmen who opposed him. Rather, he has sought to bring them into his camp. When critics told him how often men like Chairman Wilbur D. Mills of the House Ways and Means Committee or the late Senator Robert S. Kerr opposed him, the President replied with a list of Administration measures they supported.

He rejected the advice of men like Professor James MacGregor Burns of Williams College that he should attempt to lead in the reform of Congress. That is not the way a President who wants to win rather than put on a showy fight operates, Kennedy said in effect. He stated what is for him a basic philosophy when, in a television interview in December, he was asked about last year’s fight with the steel companies: “There is no sense in raising hell and then not being successful. There is no sense in putting the office of the presidency on the line on an issue and then being defeated.”

The President accepts the inevitable difficulties of the seniority system because he believes that there is nothing he can do to change it. He has continued to act within the existing system and to accept philosophically the limitations on his power. For example, he was never particularly fond of Representative John W. McCormack. But when Speaker Sam Rayburn died in 1961, Kennedy’s political sense, his sense of what is possible, told him that to try to deny the Speakership to McCormack would stir the bitterest kind of party strife.

The President therefore worked to establish the best possible relationship with Speaker McCormack. Today Kennedy is convinced that his efforts have paid dividends. In McCormack’s second year as Speaker, the President describes his relations with him as excellent. To the surprise of nearly everyone, when the Rules Committee fight came up on the opening day of the new Congress, McCormack won it by 39 votes. Two years earlier Rayburn led the fight and won it by 5 votes. McCormack and his associates could claim an exceptional victory. So, also, could John F. Kennedy, who is convinced that he knows more about the art of dealing with Congress than any of his critics.

Who’s who in Congress

While the leadership group under McCormack is not wholly united and of single purpose, it does have a strength that has not always been present in recent years. At the top of the list in general influence is Carl Albert, the quiet-spoken Oklahoman who is more conservative than most New Frontiersmen and whose homespun appearance hides a quick and resourceful intellect. In his unobtrusive way, this former Rhodes Scholar is a tower of strength to the Administration as the House Majority Leader.

If Albert is at the top of the list in general influence, House Ways and Means Chairman Mills is at the top in specific influence, and his influence is not always used as the President wishes. An independent conservative of extraordinary ability, Mills commands what is easily the most important House committee, because it has original jurisdiction over all revenue bills and because its 15 Democratic members serve as their party’s committee on committees to fill Democratic vacancies on other committees.

On the Ways and Means calendar are or have been Kennedy’s trade-expansion bill, the principal Administration measure in the last Congress; the new tax bill, the principal measure this year; the medical care for the aged bill; unemployment compensation; and debt limitation measures. No one in Congress has a greater sense of what the House will do than Mills. Rarely does he take a bill to the floor until he is sure it is bulletproof.

Fortunately for the President, Representative Hale Boggs of Louisiana, the Majority Whip in the House, is a senior member of Ways and Means. He has been influential in persuading reluctant Southern Democrats to support the President. Boggs is less conservative than Mills and more a party stalwart. His relations with the President are excellent. As Whip he has played a leading role in sizing up the party’s chances in advance of key votes. Two other members who, like Boggs, have played a significant role in persuading Southerners to support the Administration are two representatives from Alabama, Albert Rains, on the Banking and Currency Committee, and Carl Elliott, an Administration leader on the Rules Committee and an expert on education. Elliott was co-author of the National Defense Education Act and will play a key role in the fight for education programs this year. Both Rains and Elliott long ago were aroused against the Rules Committee because it blocked the housing and education bills they fathered.

Representative Richard Bolling of Missouri was passed over a year ago when the leadership team was formed. Now he has regained some of the influence he had when he was Rayburn’s spokesman on the Rules Committee, and his counsel is increasingly sought. Finally, the powerful Representative Carl Vinson of Georgia, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, will play a dominant role in defense policy.

Of more than passing interest is the future of the GOP rebels who surprised their colleagues the day before Congress convened by installing Ford as chairman of the House Republican Conference. They unquestionably had their eyes on the 1964 campaign.

Although there have been substantial changes in the Senate membership, the leadership on both sides of the aisle remains the same — which is to say, moderate but not very forceful. Increasingly, the second man on each side is providing the push: Democratic Whip Hubert H. Humphrey, and Republican Whip Thomas H. Kuchel, who won a resounding victory in California last November when former Vice President Nixon was defeated in his bid for the governorship.

The death of Senator Kerr removed the most powerful figure from the upper chamber at a critical time, since the President was relying on him to help win Senate approval of the tax bill. Ironically, Kerr’s death makes the Administration task in another field easier, however. He led the fight last year against the President’s medical care program, when it was narrowly defeated on the Senate floor.

One of the most powerful obstructionists in the Senate is Richard B. Russell of Georgia, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee and the leader of the little band of Southerners who are less and less effective with each passing year. If Russell’s energies were directed toward positive accomplishments rather than opposition, he would hold a commanding position in the nation and in his party, for there are few abler men in Congress.

As soon as he reached Washington this year, he assailed the Administration’s plan to give military aid to India. His statement recalled the comment of Harold Laski that no private member of any other legislative body in the world enjoys so much power and influence as do members of Congress. The fact that he directly challenged the leader of his party, that he raised in India grave doubts about America’s intentions, and that he put his knowledge of foreign policy requirements above that of the President and the Secretaries of State and Defense apparently bothered Russell not at all. Perhaps his outcry was useful in reminding the President that the 88th Congress was not very different from the 87th in its determination to assert its own powers and maintain its independence of presidential leadership.

Mood of the Capital

While there is generally more optimism in Washington since the Cuban crisis about the future course of the cold war, the President is on guard. He does not believe that a government which less than a year ago planned to place nuclear missiles in Cuba has been changed by one setback. In the President’s view there will be more perils and more opportunities as 1963 unfolds. He cannot foresee the effects on world affairs of the Sino-Soviet differences, and he recognizes that China may have altered the balance of power in Asia by its attack on India.

Domestically, the President shares the somewhat restrained optimism prevalent this winter about the economy. The winter was not so bad as he had feared, although unemployment remained discouragingly high. His big battle with business is a thing of the past, he believes. Labor problems, particularly strikes growing out of fears of automation and loss of jobs, bother him, and he feels that they will get worse rather than better. But if Congress will approve the tax bill, nearly everything on the domestic front will improve, he feels, from the unemployment rate to labor relations.